


Not Made For Mourning

by GretchenSinister



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-11
Updated: 2019-05-11
Packaged: 2020-02-29 18:40:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18783916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GretchenSinister/pseuds/GretchenSinister
Summary: Original Prompt: "The Guardians decide to throw a birthday party for Jack on the day he became a spirit. Jacks extremely happy with it, but its accidentally revealed that the day he was reborn as a spirit is the day he died as a human.Make me cry. Please?"The Guardians are really troubled to learn about Jack’s death; Jack doesn’t think that’s the right thing to focus on.





	Not Made For Mourning

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on Tumblr on 8/22/2015.

And what makes someone dead, and what is death? Jack wants to ask the others, as they look at him with horrified eyes after he explains what this day is, the day not only of his rebirth but also of the death of his body. What do they expect of him? He doesn’t want to be sad today, not for the human life that is gone, anyway. He doesn’t want to mourn for seventeen years, maybe fourteen or thirteen of them remembered. Those years were good! He’s glad to know now that he had them; he’s glad to add those memories to the ones he already has. But, ah, the memories he already has. There are many, many of them. More than twenty times the amount of memory the tooth box gave him, memory he’s carried far longer, memory he’ll always have carried longer than what was in the tooth box. And, more than this, what’s in the tooth-box is feather light compared to the weight of some others, even with his death.  
  
True, he would not have chosen to die at seventeen, he would not have chosen to drown and leave his family behind. But he would always choose to save his sister’s life, and she did live—Jack remembers her now, seeing her after he was reborn. She lived and had children and grandchildren, and she had seemed happy, as far as Jack could tell. He’s glad about that, but would the other Guardians understand if he told them, looking at him the way they are now? Why do they do so? Is it because they’re immortal? Is it because they’ve spent so much time away from children? In some places they survive more, now, but that’s not everywhere. Death is everywhere for mortals, the thought of it cannot hold them too dreadfully, too permanently while they live.  
  
How can the others ask him to feel any particular sadness on the day of his death? He doesn’t think he’s dead in any way that matters, as he stands here trying to think of what to say to those who will at least hear the sound of his voice when he speaks, even if he is not sure if the meaning will be conveyed. Do they expect him to mourn for his family? But he already has, in his way, even if he didn’t know they were his family, then. And he’s mourned for many families after that, too. He knows that family isn’t just blood—it wasn’t for that reason that he was glad of his memories, he hadn’t been looking for blood, he had been looking for a family and now he needs to say something so that the Guardians will understand and they can become a new family. He wants them to understand that he’s not made for mourning death. His mourning is giving those still alive the chance to smile again, and trying to show them that it’s all right, it’s all right, you don’t have to be sad forever. He wants them to understand that there are things more rightly sorrowed for than death.  
  
“Guys,” he says. “We need to talk about why you’re more worried that I was dead for a few hours than that I was alone for three hundred years.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Comments from Tumblr:
> 
> mira-eyeteeth reblogged this from gretchensinister and added:  
> SCREAMS ABOUT THIS


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